In 2017, when Megyn Kelly left Fox News for NBC, her star could not have been brighter. Amidst the muck of Fox News, Kelly was an unlikely note of elegance; she benefited enormously from the sharp contrast between herself and the rest of her on-air colleagues. In the 12 years she was at the network, Kelly developed a reputation for moderate reason, occasional principle, and refined poise. She held herself to a higher standard than either the frothing men in suits anchoring other shows on the network or the other firebrand blonde conservatives eager to go viral—sort of. That still didn’t stop her from pitching a now-infamous fit over the concept of a nonwhite Santa Claus—and a nonwhite Jesus, too. As Jamelle Bouieoutlined at Slate, Kelly’s restraint made her seem in opposition to Trump, whom she occasionally sparred with—but she shared his demagoguery, and simply cloaked it in a softer glove.

But changing contexts entirely changed the Megyn Kelly narrative. She switched them twice: from conservative cable-news channel Fox News to broadcast network NBC’s news division, and from primetime to daytime. Both changes put her at a massive disadvantage, as I noted at the time. And sure enough, Kelly is now on the verge of being a former NBC anchor, as well. On Tuesday morning, Kelly defended the use of blackface for Halloween costumes, which snowballed into a national news story. Her own colleagues on NBC criticized her remarks openly; NBC Nightly News anchor Lester Holt ran a segment on his co-worker’s history of racially insensitive statements. Although Kelly apologized in an internal memo sent to NBC news that afternoon and on air the next day—in a segment that received a standing ovation—the damage was done. To paraphrase my colleague Richard Lawson, I can only assume Tamron Hall, whom Kelly ignominiously replaced in the 9 A.M. hour, is ordering another round of mimosas.

Now, as Kelly’s star approaches its dimmest hour, the myth that Megyn Kelly would turn into a thoughtful conservative-female journalist, has never been more transparently false. Kelly’s tenure at NBC has been an unqualified failure; the most memorable aspect of Megyn Kelly Today is just how many times Kelly apologized for something she’d said, whether that was for asking Jane Fonda about her plastic surgery last fall or wholeheartedly endorsing body shaming in January. The competitive market of morning shows favors warm, charismatic personalities like Kelly Ripa and Gayle King; Kelly, distinguished by her cool demeanor, never stood a chance.

Ratings aside, Kelly failed to distinguish herself as a journalist, too. Her attempts to do so in a primetime show, Sunday Night with Megyn Kelly, created its own catastrophes. The Vladmir Putin interview was mostly just boring—but her effort to do a serious news segment on Infowars’s Alex Jones, an unhinged right-wing talking head who denies that the Sandy Hook massacre ever happened, was an offensive trainwreck.

When NBC News chief Andy Lack brought Kelly on—for $23 million annually, reportedly—the hope seemed that she would embody the voice of some segment of the population: white female viewers just waiting to see someone like Kelly express their same maternal, ruffled concerns about decency and family values. Kelly pitched herself in that direction, trying to model herself after Barbara Walters (but without the journalistic rigor), or the adored Ripa (but without the endearing attitude), or even one of the queens of daytime television, Ellen DeGeneres (but without the warmth or personality).

Whatever Lack was hoping for has not paid off. Several million dollars later, the audience Kelly was supposed to bring to NBC never arrived. (At least when ABC had to upend its schedule to fire Roseanne Barr, it could claim massive ratings success.) Needless to say, Kelly has not reached this intended audience, and in retrospect her hiring was particularly odd. The largest demographic share for morning shows belongs to the African-American female audience, one especially primed to dislike Kelly’s long history of thinly veiled racism.

Megyn Kelly looked like a star anchor, and for a while at NBC and Fox News—and on our own cover—that seemed like enough. But the more money and effort that has gone into her brand, the fewer actual results have emerged, whether you measure ratings success, cultural clout, or acts of fearless journalism. It’s unsettling, and incredibly depressing, to witness how potent the myth of a graceful, beautiful, conservative woman was for so much of the media establishment—and how much money Kelly made trading off the image of herself, versus the actual substance of her talents. In a season of scammers, Kelly’s emerging as the consummate con woman. She sold us all exactly what we wanted to believe in.